First let me tell you why I thing exchanges are bad: In order to operate, exchanges have to partner with major banks, there are millions and sometimes billions of dollars flowing thru these exchanges, that alone automatically sets a red flag with the bank and thus banks will easily impose anything they want upon those exchanges. Then one might ask, what is the problem there?
Well I will tell you what the problem is: Banks are the cancer of the world economy and they are the one we are fighting against!!!
Not only that but if you look historicaly exchanges have brought caos to bicoin several times, remember Mt. Gox? Bitstamp? BTCe? Kraken? and many others had problems, they retain customers fund but don't secure them, besides that if their business model is to convert Fiat to Crypto and vice versa, what are the incentives for them to promote fiat extinction? Which I believe is our goal, eventually.
Governments are already forcing exchanges to comply with their demands, which is another risky factor, they can freeze your account or devalue your money by making another fork and not giving users their fair share.
Let's use what will happen in August 1st as an example, Coinbase, Bitstamp and others will not give their customers BCC/BCH of the amount they have in bitcoins, which means exchanges are now doing the same as banks and government, they are making inflation and keeping the profits in the process.
Decentralized exchanges are needed urgently, and exchanges that partner with banks should be avoided at all costs. I agree that they played a critical role in bringing up crypto prices, but surely they made lots of people lose lots of money.